Monty would be Proud

As of this very minute, about 4 p.m. on Thursday Aug 25, 2011, the Yumarama Blog has just 24 of them to go before hitting the amazing milestone of

Yes, we’ve now received TWENTY THOUSAND Spam comments! Spam, spam, spam, spam and spam… as Monty Python said so many years back.

This blog started up back in April 2008 and in that time has seen a pretty steady increase of not just spammers but actual visitors as well. Although we’re not exactly Google-ish in visitor count, we’re managing a pretty nice 2,200 or so visitors each month with an average of 3.5 minutes spent per visit. Now assuming that a fair number just pop in and pop out, that means that you, the die-hard Friends Of Yumarama are actually spending a fair bit of time if you can make the three second visitors’ times average out to 3+ minutes!

So thanks to all of you who take the time to read through my little corner of the intarwebs. And please do toss in comments when you can, it’s always good to hear from friend both new and old.

A little bit more about the spam which I happen to find intriguing:

In our first year, 2008, I got practically nothing in spam messages. In fact, just three.

Then in 2009, we jumped up to 2,700 spams. In 2010, that more than doubled to 5,600 spams for the year.

And here we are, in August 2011 and we’re already at the 11,000 mark with a third left to the year.

And what did these 20,000 some spams accomplish? Nothing. Since I have the Akismet program added to the blog, it has caught and trashed all but about 15 spams. Although I do review them all before clicking the trash button, it hasn’t really been much work to deflect all that garbage. And garbage it is. Endless versions of the same “messages” vaguely praising the (unspecific) content of the site, some asking what template is used, and almost all of them in horrid English. There have been a couple that have tried something a little different: rudely stating that [whatever post they stuck the spam comment to] was completely wrong and they wanted to argue.

So I guess what this tells us, aside from the fact there are plenty of people out there with nothing terribly useful to do but write programs that send garbage to blogs worldwide, that at least our little bread universe here is actually known well enough to not just get spammers but also to increasingly draw in folk who do have an interest in exploring this topic.

And to you I tip my baker’s cap and say a hearty “Thanks!”

2 Replies to “Monty would be Proud”

  1. Loved that you posted about spam – I often wonder exactly the same: what do these folks accomplish? Basically nothing. Too many odd birds out there, I think.

    I don’t know what bloggers would do without a good filter – like WordPress provides – it would be a nightmare to keep a blog going.

    “Congrats” on the 20,000 milestone! 😉

  2. What a brilliant idea to count them!! I have been quite negligent and have boringly just deleted them.

    (found you via Natashya’s alert to look at your lemon pull apart bread)

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